Length + Girth Calculator
Measure a box the way the carriers do — girth, length + girth, and cube — and see before you ship whether it trips the Additional Handling, Large Package, or Over Maximum Limits surcharge.
Weight matters too — over 50 lb trips Additional Handling on its own, and the big fees are weight-driven as well.
Surcharge check
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What it trips
| Surcharge | Triggers when… | This package |
|---|
How to measure length and girth
Carriers don’t just weigh a package — they measure how awkward it is to move. Length is the single longest side. Girth is the distance around the thickest part, measured as 2 × width + 2 × height (the two shorter sides). Length + girth adds them together. A 30 × 20 × 18″ box has a girth of 2 × (20 + 18) = 76″, so its length plus girth is 30 + 76 = 106″.
A box doesn’t have to be heavy to be expensive. Bulky-but-light is exactly what these surcharges are built to catch.
The three surcharge tiers
As a package gets bigger it steps through three tiers of fees. This tool checks your box against all of them (UPS and FedEx ground thresholds, which are closely aligned):
| Tier | Triggers when any of… |
|---|---|
| Additional Handling | longest > 48″ · 2nd side > 30″ · weight > 50 lb · cube > 10,368 in³ |
| Large Package | length + girth > 130″ · longest > 96″ · cube > 17,280 in³ · weight > 110 lb |
| Over Maximum Limits | weight > 150 lb · longest > 108″ · length + girth > 165″ |
A Large Package replaces the Additional Handling charge (you aren’t billed both) and carries a 90 lb minimum billable weight, so even a light one bills as if it weighed 90 lb. Over Maximum Limits means the package is past what parcel will carry — expect a steep penalty fee or a refusal, and plan to palletize it.
Staying out of the surcharge
If you’re just over a line, a smaller box or splitting one package into two compliant ones is often cheaper than a single surcharged parcel. And once a shipment is genuinely large or heavy, parcel stops being the cheap option — run it through the Parcel vs LTL calculator to see whether it should go LTL freight instead.
One note on the numbers
These are the size and weight triggers, which are stable and public. The dollar amount of each surcharge is set by the carrier and changes with every annual rate increase, so this tool tells you whether a fee applies, not the exact charge — check your carrier’s current rate sheet for that.